Colecovision Composite Upgrade

Greetingz all! This will actually be the first real post on my restructured website. I won this Colecovision on eBay, the seller accepted my offer on an ‘untested’ unit. These are often times listed as untested for plausible deniability – when the seller knows it doesn’t work, but want’s to avoid a bad review. Much to my surprise, after some mild cleanup, the unit works fine, but with the typical 80’s fuzzy video.

I set about finding options for improving the video quality. The most simple and cost effective I found was a composite mod. The one I ended up using was the board from Retro Fixes. While small and unobtrusive, it is easy to work with. Yes, you need  to drill holes in the Colecovision case to install the RCA style jacks. I recommend daisy-chaining the ground for the jacks. It’s a little tedious, but is much cleaner. Be careful with your soldering iron temps! I lifted a pad at 350 deg C and was quite…. displeased with myself. It was an easy repair, but I don’t like damaging classic equipment.

You can see the difference in the Before/After pics above. The little board does a fantastic job giving a nice composite output. The audio is much less static-y as well. Overall, I think it took me about an hour to install this mod, and it was VERY well worth it.